Event description

The conference is to mark Dorothy’s retirement from Birkbeck, after a career in philosophy of extraordinary distinction, during which she made major contributions, especially in the logic of probability, conditionals, and vagueness. Dorothy went up to Oxford in 1960 where she read PPE. After a year’s graduate work in economics, she switched to philosophy, and did the B. Phil., working mainly with Michael Dummett. In 1968 Dorothy was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck. She was soon joined by two other much-loved enfants terribles, Mark Platts and Ian McFetridge, and they had a major impact on London philosophy in the 70s and 80s.

In 1996 Dorothy became Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, in 2001 a Professor at Birkbeck again, and in 2003 she was appointed to the Waynflete Chair of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, in succession to Collingwood, Ryle, Strawson and Peacocke. Dorothy was the first woman to hold the Waynflete Chair. She retired from Oxford in 2006, returning to Birkbeck as Senior Research Professor, a role in which she continued to serve philosophy in London until this summer. She has held visiting positions at UBC, Mexico, Princeton, Buenos Aires, Austin Texas, Berkeley, and Sassari, Sardinia.As one of the outstanding philosophers of her generation, Dorothy naturally forged friendships and working relationships with other leading contemporary philosophers. She has worked closely with Ernest Adams, David Lewis, Jonathan Bennett, and others too numerous to mention. She is also held in the highest esteem by the many successful PhD students who were her pupils, who attest to her unfailing care, attention and kindness.